AUSTIN — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is taking credit for a good economy, improved high school graduation rates and a crackdown on criminal gangs as his re-election campaign airs its first statewide television ad.

On Thursday morning, hoping to reach a large audience expected for the preseason NFL game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans later that evening, Abbott released a 30-second spot, “Promises Made, Promises Kept.”

The ad “will run on cable and broadcast networks across Texas,” Texans for Greg Abbott said in a written statement. It offered no details. A spokesman said that in Abbott's primary contest against two lightly funded rivals, he aired some TV spots but none ran statewide.

Abbott enjoys huge advantages in name recognition and money as he faces former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez in the Nov. 6 election.

The ad doesn’t mention Valdez, a Democrat. Abbott speaks to the camera throughout.

“Four years ago, I made some big promises,” he says. “And I work every day to keep them.”

The ad shows Abbott, who was paralyzed in the mid-1980s when a tree fell on him, spinning his wheelchair through a warehouse, a residential subdivision and a school hallway crowded with high-school-age students. His attire ranges from business suit to polo shirt and khakis.

“High school graduation rates are at all-time highs,” Abbott continues.

While methods vary for calculating graduation rates, data from the Texas Education Agency show a four-year rate in 1996 of 74.5 percent. It has steadily increased almost every year, with a few exceptions long before Abbott became governor in 2015. That year the rate was 89 percent. For 2016, the most recent year for which numbers are available, the rate was 89.1 percent, the highest in at least two decades.

Abbott’s statement cited news reports about gang arrests that added up to hundreds, not thousands.

When asked for historical data, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety released numbers showing that the Texas Anti-Gang Center in Houston, one of several in the state, reported 4,907 arrests in the region between January 2015 and July 2018. Statewide figures were not immediately available.

As of June 30, Abbott had $29 million in the bank. That was after a period of slightly more than four months in which he spent $22 million, including buying air time for the fall contest. Valdez's report showed a June 30 cash balance of $220,000.